California Magazine

California Magazine

Shelf Life

Dusting off the works of Eugene Burdick, Beverly Cleary, Ina Coolbirth, Harriet Lane Levy, George Stewart. Plus: hyenas in the hills, rebranding public health, advertisers we have known, Fisher Collection, Berkeley bookstores, quake map, and more... Learn more »

Natural Affinities

Reading George Stewart in Antarctica.

In my mid-teens, when I first showed an interest in writing, my mother would occasionally recommend two novels by George R. Stewart, an old English professor of hers at Cal. One was called Fire and the other Storm...

Learn more »

Poetic Gesture

A California crown for Lord Byron.

One late July day in 1870, two poets boarded a side-wheel ferry at Meiggs Wharf in San Francisco. The Princess plowed six miles across the mouth of the bay to what was then the village of "Saucelito,"...

Learn more »

Pressing Business

The University of California Press supports its mission of publishing good scholarship.

The media today—newspapers, books, and, yes, magazines—are in a bewildering situation. People are getting information in new ways...

Learn more »

An Independent Existence

Recalling Harriet Lane Levy’s unusual, eclectic life.

The news of a neighbor's betrothal was not greeted with joy in the household of Benjamin and Yetta Levy. Far from it...

Learn more »

Extraordinarily Ordinary

Beverly Cleary’s ordinary folk on Klickitat Street make magic for young readers.

You won’t find a vampire in a Beverly Cleary book. There are no zombies, witches, warlocks, or wizards in the world inhabited by Ramona and Beezus Quimby...

Learn more »

Intellectual Action Hero

The political fictions of Eugene Burdick.

The Berkeley “Teach-in,” held over the course of one cold, windy weekend in May 1965, helped set the template for countless Vietnam protests to come...

Learn more »